11. The myrtil. The vulgar Italian wild myrtil (though not indeed the most fragrant) grows high, and supports all weathers and climates; they thrive abroad in Bretany, in places cold and very sharp in Winter; and are observ’d no where to prosper so well, as by the sea-coasts, the air of which is more propitious to them (as well as to oranges and lemmons, &c.) than the inland air. I know of one near eighty years old, which has been continually expos’d; unless it be, that in some exceeding sharp seasons, a little dry straw has been thrown upon it; and where they are smitten, being cut down near the ground, they put forth and recover again; which many times they do not in pots and cases, where the roots are very obnoxious to perish with mouldiness. The shelter of a few mats, and straw, secur’d very great trees (both leaf and colour in perfection) this last Winter also, which were planted abroad; whilst those that were carried into the conserve, were most of them lost. Myrtils (which are of six or eight sorts) may be rais’d of seeds; as also may several varieties of oranges and lemmons, and made (after some years attendance) to produce fruit in the cold Rhetia and Helvetick valleys; but with great caution, and after all, seldom prove worth the pains, being so abundantly multiplied of suckers, slips and layers: The double-flower (which is the most beautiful) was first discovered by the incomparable Fabr. Piereshy, which a mule had cropt from a wild shrub. Note, that you cannot give those plants too much compost or refreshing, nor clip them too often, even to the stem; which will grow tall, and prosper into any shape; so as arbours have been made of single trees of the hardy kind, protected in the Winter with sheads of straw and reeds. Both leaves and berries refrigerate, and are very astringent and drying, and therefore seldom us’d within, except in fluxes: With wine and honey it heals the noisome _polypus_, and the powder corrects the rankness of the arm-pits, and _gousset_ (as the French term it) to which divers of the female sex are subject: The berries mitigate the inflammations of the eyes, consolidate broken-bones; and a decoction of the juice, leaves, and berries, dyes the hair black, & _enecant vitiligenes_, as Dioscorides says, l. 1. c. 128. And there is an excellent sweet water extracted from the distill’d leaves and flowers: To which the naturalist adds, that they us’d the berries instead of pepper, to stuff and farce with them. Hence the _mortadella a mortatula_, still so call’d by the Italians, perhaps the μυρτίδες of Athenæus, _deip._ l. 2. c. 12. The _vinum myrtites_ so celebrated by the{290:1} ancients, and so the oyl; And in some places the leaves for tanning of leather: and trees have grown to such substance, as of the very wood curious cups and boxes have been turn’d.